A few summers ago, I met Kate Bowler in Myrtle Beach to speak to a room of pastors who had just pulled their congregations through a pandemic, political fracture, and collective exhaustion. During our conversation, Kate and I kept circling the same question: where do we find grit and resilience and joy and humor and silliness with others as the medicine for the hardest things in life? Today, Kate and I hopped on Substack Live to talk about and mark the release of her new book, JOYFUL, ANYWAY. Bowler is a professor at Duke University, a historian of American religion, a four-time New York Times bestselling author, and the host of the podcast Everything Happens. After being diagnosed with stage four cancer at age 35, her work took on even more urgency as she took on questions of pain, mortality, hope, and meaning while maintaining an unusual sense of humor about being human. (You can watch our conversation above! Group Lifers have access to the whole dang thing.) Joy can seem frou-frou in a world full of grief, loneliness, violence, and uncertainty. One of the things I appreciate about Bowler’s work is that she treats joy not as denial, but as a form of radical, insisting presence. She describes joy as “an aperture” that opens us up to feel everything more fully, not escape. At the start of our conversation, I asked her (and all of you) what was bringing her joy lately, and she told me about a song she sings with her son, “Dr. Worm,” by They Might Be Giants. It’s about a worm learning to play the drums while trying to handle criticism. There’s your song of the day. You’re welcome. Here are six things I’m carrying with me from our conversation: 1. Water the garden. One of the things I found in my research for my forthcoming book is that the groups that make it through difficult reckonings aren't pretending the hard thing didn't exist. But they're also not only talking about the hard thing, over and over again. They do things that water the garden — they create moments of delight, humor, ritual, and shared presence that remind people why they wanted to stay connected in the first place. Joy is not a distraction; it is part of how people remain resilient enough to stay in relationship with one another. 2. Joy is not an escape hatch. Happiness, Bowler explained, is often circumstantial. Your kombucha is the right temperature. Your friend calls you back. Things are going your way. That’s also why it’s so fragile when life gets hard. “Our good vibes culture,” she said, “is actually a lot more fragile than we think it is.” Joy is different. Joy can exist in the middle of grief, illness, uncertainty, fear, and exhaustion. It doesn’t erase any of it; it helps us stay present to it. “Joy is not a state,” Bowler said. “It’s a moment.” 3. Name the thing. Let people celebrate it. Bowler read to us about hosting a “This Is a Big Deal to Me” party. Here’s how it works: Bring the thing that matters to you and let people make a big fuss about it. It can be anything from switching therapists to surviving another day at the hospital to having a hard conversation. You all shared your own examples in the chat: surgery recovery, a mediocre watercolor, a rose bush finally blooming, and disputing a phone bill. Modern life leaves many of us without shared rituals of recognition. Wins can feel strangely private or even embarrassing to mention out loud. But when someone says, “This mattered to me,” it gives the rest of us permission to reconsider our own lives too. 4. Host tiny funerals. We have so few rituals for grief, transition, and change, even though these moments shape so much of our lives. Bowler shared her “Lunch to Remember” — gathering people on the anniversary of someone’s death or birthday to share stories and say what you wish they were here for this year. We also talked about Rebecca Soffer, whose father died in December. During Hanukkah, when she feels his loss most, she brings people together and asks them to bring the best joke they heard all year because her father used to host something he called “The Laughers Club.” Mark your moments with your people. Host a tiny funeral for something you are grieving: a bad breakup, a major surgery, a job loss, a version of yourself. Light a candle, read a poem, wear black, play a song, or say a prayer. 5. Recognition is communal fuel. So often people think, “Oh, this person already knows how I feel about them…they know they’re appreciated… they know they matter.” But people do not know, and they do want to hear it. One thing I try to do regularly is write notes of appreciation to people I don’t know, like a crossing guard after a particularly thoughtful interaction, or a bookstore because their signage makes me laugh, or a website because the copy feels so deeply thought through. Behind most people’s work is deep care, even obsession, and much of it goes unnoticed. Community is partly built by noticing and tapping each other on the shoulder to say, “I saw that. Keep going. You’re doing great.” 6. Only say what’s true. Toward the end of our conversation, I asked Bowler about appearing on the Today Show with Savannah Guthrie while Guthrie has been living through an enormous and very public crisis. Bowler talked about how tempting it is in those moments to reach for what she called “an almost-truth” — everything is going to be okay, this happened for a reason, someday this will all make sense. “But often we do not know those things,” Bowler said. What made the exchange feel so powerful was that neither of them was trying to force certainty onto something uncertain. They were staying honest inside something unresolved. “We can promise each other joy,” she said. Earlier in our conversation, she put it another way: “Joy is the oxygen of doing hard things.” So much of that joy, I think, is found in the tiny rituals that help us stay connected to our own lives. I’m curious: what’s a tiny ritual that helps you create joy in difficult moments? As always, Priya
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